Freaks, Not Greeks

Gone also was much of the text and all but hints of the subtext. There was more music (by Tim Gray), fancier scenery and more stage tricks, which a woman seated behind me repeatedly but aptly called “clever.”

The show is now called Crawdaddy’s Astounding Odditorium, and dropping the “tragedy” from the title is fully justified. The family history and drama, and particularly the drama of the freak show and its relationship to money and customers, is mostly gone. Though the tragedy is suggested when one of the separated sisters survives but makes her ventilator part of the show, there is comparatively little emotional consequence to the separation, and the moment is without clear motive or outcome.

Some fragmentary outlines and residual suggestions of a story remain, but the storytelling is ineffective, lost in a furor of attempted effects, too many of which fell flat. The show now seems to want to be some kind of musical comedy, but it’s not that funny, and the music — while impressive, with some dazzling choral singing — just doesn’t have the wattage to carry a show.

Having dumped the tragedy and actual storytelling, it had nowhere to go but as a collection of sportive bits and tricks. It’s odd but not unprecedented to see a show in the process of development go backwards. I can’t totally dissociate what I saw this weekend from the show I saw last spring, but I experienced it as largely pointless and soulless.

Coming Up: This Friday, North Coast Rep in Eureka opens an evening of two one-act plays, Beware the Man Eating Chicken by Henry Meyerson and TheGoat or, Who Is Sylvia by Edward Albee, both directed by NCRT Artistic Director Michael Thomas … Redwood Curtain combines dinner theatre with a live radio show on Saturday (Jan. 24) at the Sapphire Palace in Blue Lake. Info: 443-7688.

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